The Family Reunion
by Bamimilyt6
Summary: During Spring Break, Dipper and Mabel's parents hold a family reunion, inviting over many relatives. The twins fear their Grunkles won't be able to make it to Piedmont due to their expedition on The Stan O' War II. However, when they show up, a supposedly dead dream demon tags along to ruin the party. Nothing is as it seems. [Twoshot. No Pairings. Rated T because I'm paranoid]
1. Chapter 1

**Hey guys! So, uhm, this is my first Gravity Falls story. It didn't exactly turn out how I wanted it to, plus the writing style kind changes a bit. I hope you like it anyways. Enjoy this kind-of-sucky oneshot!**

 **~Emily Believes xoxo**

* * *

"Do the tablecloths really need anymore decorations?"

"Nothing can have too many decorations!"

"You've already glued down so many stars and rainbows that no one will have anywhere to put their plates."

"A worthy sacrifice! Give me the hot glue gun!"

"Glue _stick_ , Mabel. We have a glue stick."

"Whatever will make this unicorn stick to the cloth!"

Dipper smiled and handed his twin sister the glue stick they had been using. It was a sunny day in Oakland, California. The Pines family drove a quarter of an hour away from their hometown of Piedmont to a park to hold a family reunion. Mabel, being very artistic, was assigned the task of "enhancing" the surrounding area to make it more appealing to the eye. Thus, the entire morning of March 5th the Pines Twins were decorating the picnic tables at Roberts Regional Recreation Area for the occasion.

The twins' mother Abigail walked over to the table Dipper and Mabel were currently by, placing a platter of fruits in the center. She shared their dark brown eyes and hair. The twins' looked up at her upon noticing her presence. "People are going to be arriving soon," she informed with a grin.

"It's going to be a rather small reunion," Phil Pines, the twins' dad, said somewhat nervously. He was holding more plates with various types of food and set them down on the table. His famous family cowlick was passed down to both Dipper and Mabel, making it obvious that they were akin to him. "We sent a lot of invitations, but we only got a few RSVPs…"

"Though some people may show up unannounced," Abigail pointed out.

"Knowing my family, that wouldn't be much of a surprise," Phil said with a sigh.

Abigail and Phil continued to get plates of prepared food out of their car and put them on the picnic tables. Mabel resumed decorating the tablecloths (and other various items of nature that probably didn't need to be decorated), leaving Dipper alone with his thoughts. After a moment of weirdly standing in the middle of six picnic tables, staring blankly ahead, he walked over to his parents.

"So, uh... Mom, Dad, did you guys hear anything from Grunkle Stan?" he asked his parents awkwardly as they were digging for something in the trunk of the car.

The two adults glanced at each other for a second with confused looks. "Oh! You mean your Great Uncle Stan, hm?" Abigail said, looking over her shoulder to face him. He nodded.

There was a pause, making the background noise of rustling leaves and Mabel's humming easily heard for a moment. "Sorry kiddo, don't think we heard from him," Phil responded apologetically.

"Well, with him and Grunkle Ford out a sea and all. . . ," Dipper mumbled to himself, trailing off. His parents simply brushed it off (he apparently picked up the habit over the summer) and watched as he disappointedly started to walk off.

"Hey, but who knows? My Uncle Stan's pretty mysterious, you know-" ("You can say that again," Dipper muttered under his breath) "-maybe he'll show up! Your Grandpa Shermie's even coming, and he hasn't come to visit since you and Mabel were about six or seven," Phil said in an attempt to cheer up his son.

Paranoia started to work its way into Dipper's mind as he smiled, nodded, and walked back over to Mabel. What if Grunkle Stan and Grunkle Ford couldn't come because they had been stranded on some island? What if they managed to get themselves in jail? What if some monster injured them? What if some monster _killed_ them? What if Bill came back and they were too worried the demon would hurt him or Mabel? What if-

His thoughts were interrupted by Mabel placing some sort of sticker near his right temple. "It'll fit right in with the constellation!" she said proudly. He peeled the sticker from his face to see it was a star, conveniently placed near the birthmark on his forehead that looked like the Big Dipper.

"Ha, ha, ha," Dipper said sarcastically, making sure his hair was covering his birthmark, "Not funny." He placed the sticker on the nearest tablecloth, his face dropping into an anxious frown.

Whether it be twin telepathy or simply reading the atmosphere, Mabel noticed and grew concerned. "Bro, Dip-Dop, what's wrong?" she asked, walking over to him.

"I'm just really worried about Stan and Ford," he admitted, sighing afterwards.

"Hey, they might be old, but they know how to beat up supernatural monsters! Plus they have awesome weapons that Grunkle Ford made! They're fine, Dipper. Probably just busy. You worry too much," she said, punching him in the shoulder. The sound of a truck pulling into the parking lot stole the twins' attention quickly, however. "Hey, look, it's Aunt Gabby and Uncle Brian! Hi, Aunt Gabby! Hi, Uncle Brian!" she shouted from a distance, starting to run over to her relatives.

"Haha… ow…," Dipper muttered to himself belatedly, rubbing his arm where Mabel punched him and following her to greet family, though nothing could really stop the thought of Bill possessing one of his relatives from creeping into his mind.

* * *

The sun was high in the sky, though the vague remnants of winter made the air chilly. Mabel and Dipper were sitting at one of the "enhanced" picnic tables across from their grandfather Sherman Pines. Apparently, Sherman had heard that the twins spent the summer with their Great Uncle Stanford Pines and was oddly curious about it. So, of course, Mabel took the liberty of explaining whatever normalcy she could squeeze out of their crazy vacation. Even then, Dipper observed that the old man's face looked slightly skeptical throughout the entire energetically-told story.

"Never thought Ford was that type 'a person," was what Sherman said immediately after Mabel stopped talking.

Dipper raised an eyebrow before remembering an important detail. Everyone at this reunion - everyone except for him and Mabel - thought that last summer they were sent to the house of a highly intelligent scientist who was doing research in the sleepy town of Gravity Falls. They didn't know the truth. They knew nothing of Bill and how he tricked Ford. They knew nothing of how Ford was sucked into a portal that the dream demon convinced him to build. They knew nothing of how Stan spent three decades trying to fix the portal just to bring his brother back. They knew nothing of how Stan's made the Mystery Shack a success, or how he stole his twin's identity, or how his own death was fake. They knew nothing of even the smallest supernatural nuisance they encountered last summer, much less things like The Society of the Blind Eye and Weirdmageddon. They were completely oblivious.

There was an awkward silence. Dipper and Mabel didn't want to press the subject; he wouldn't believe them if they tried to explain it, anyways. The twins just looked around at the park, trying to avoid eye contact with their grandfather. Many adults were scattered around the picnic area, talking about subjects that would bore the thirteen-year-olds to death if they were forced to listen. There was a playground a few feet away from the picnic area that some of their smaller cousins were playing on. Mabel nearly broke her arm there on the monkey bars a little after the first few relatives arrived. Of course, other people were there too, playing on the playground and eating at another nearby area with picnic tables. There were many more cars in the parking lot than there were just a few hours ago. In fact, there seemed to be another one pulling in…

Dipper widened his eyes. "Mabel," he whispered, nudging her in the side with his arm, catching her attention. "Look!" He tried to subtly point at an old burgundy-colored car with a white hood that had been poorly parked, but Sherman too turned his head to see what he was gesturing towards.

"They made it!" Mabel whispered (well, more like whisper-yelled), practically jumping off the bench. Dipper did the same with a grin on his face.

Out of the driver's side came a man in his sixties. He fixed the navy blue knit cap that he wore over his grey hair. "Grunkle Stan!" the twins exclaimed happily as they ran over to their great uncle. They quickly tackled him in a hug.

"Oof! Hey! ..Easy there, you knuckleheads!" Stan said as the two wrapped their arms around him. After a moment, the twins stepped back, which allowed time for Dipper to notice something: a crack in Stan's glasses. Of course, that could've easily been put there but some Arctic beast, but he just found it odd.

"We thought you wouldn't be able to make it!" Dipper said, though his mind was racing with other thoughts. There was something wrong, something beyond the glasses, but he just couldn't put his finger on it. Maybe it was just his paranoia...

"And miss this? You gotta be kidding," Stan replied. "I'm taking any chance to embarrass you two I can get." Though his face didn't turn into his usual grin after the statement. While it was still a grin, it looked almost… Well, he didn't know what it looked like exactly. It just looked familiar. The grin... The cracked glasses... It was something beyond that. Something was off.

"Hey, wait a second, where's Grunkle Ford?" Mabel asked, looking around before glancing up at Stan.

"Think he saw a gnome or something and went to go investigate it. Don't worry. He should be back soon," was the reply Stan gave. Maybe he was overreacting, but to Dipper, it sounded somewhat rehearsed, pre-meditated.

He tried to shake it off, he really did, but as he walked around with Mabel and Stan, he couldn't get rid of the feeling. Something _had_ to be wrong, because even with how mysterious Stan could be, Dipper was never this suspicious of his grunkle. He tried to recollect his memories of the summer, tried to think of something that Ford wrote or said that could explain this. Perhaps it was Bill..? With that whole ordeal that happened near the end of summer - Stan and Ford switching clothes, tricking Bill; Stan's memory being erased - maybe jogging Stan's memories brought back Bill?

No. No, he didn't want to believe that was happening… but it made perfect sense. Why else would he be acting so strange? It's hard to act like you genuinely care about someone if you want to see them die in the most brutal way possible, after all. ...There was only one way to find out.

" _Look into my eyes! Look at my pupils. It's me, Dipper. It's me."_

Thus, the first chance he got, he looked behind Stan's cracked glasses and into his eyes... He couldn't believe it. He didn't _want_ to believe it. How did he not notice earlier? His suspicions were correct! Yellow tainted sclera, long vertical pupils… Bill was possessing Stan!

"Whatcha staring at, kid?" Stan? - no, Bill - asked Dipper.

But Dipper cautiously walked backwards, a terrified look on his face. What was he planning to do? Was he going to hurt his family? Mabel? Ford? Oh, God, what if he already hurt Ford and that's why he wasn't there? "Why are you possessing Stan, Bill?!" Dipper exclaimed, turning a few heads in the direction of the two. They stared at the scene with confused faces that neither Dipper nor Bill paid any attention to.

The old man's face dropped for a second. He then started to laugh… not maniacally, however. It was just a normal laugh that Dipper remembered hearing countless times over the summer. "You're just as paranoid as Ford!" he said in between laughs.

"W-What?" Dipper let out weakly, letting his arms fall to his side.

"Bill's dead! You really think that stupid triangle can do anything to me?" said (apparently) Stan. Dipper eased slightly, both mentally and physically. It was just his Grunkle Stan being… well, his old Grunkle-self. Maybe it was just a stupid prank, which honestly wouldn't be that surprising… All of this was just his stupid paranoia getting the better of him… Just stupid para-

"WELL, THEN YOU'D BE RIGHT, PINE TREE."

Dipper yelped as Bill (definitely, _definitely_ Bill) tried to grab him. He knew it; he knew it! Something was wrong; he just hoped it wasn't _this_. "How are you back?!" the boy yelled. His heart was racing. He still didn't want to believe it. "Stan and Ford got rid of you! You're dead!" He jumped on the bench of a picnic table, nearly knocking over someone's drink.

"ANCIENT MAGIC GOES A LONG WAY, KID," Bill explained, his own voice now dubbing over Stan's. "CRESCENT'S MIND JUST HAPPENED TO BE MY FIRST DESTINATION. DID YOU REALLY THINK WEIRDMAGEDDON WAS GOING TO BE THE LAST YOU SAW OF ME?" He followed after Dipper, trying to yank him down from his elevated position.

Dipper, however, just kept moving backwards, jumping off the picnic table and into a crowd of Pineses. Everyone was watching them, even strangers, especially kin. Abigail watched with her hand to her mouth in shock. Both Sherman and Phil had their eyes narrowed at Stanley, trying to figure out what exactly was going on. Other relatives looked at them horrified gapes, confused gazes, concerned stares. The scene was weird… Too weird for the likings of a small park in California.

"But the portal's destroyed, and so's the rift! You have no purpose here anymore!" Dipper said, looking around desperately for Mabel. He was too scared to call her name. What if Bill tried to hurt her? Dipper couldn't take that chance ...But he needed her right now. They always worked better together.

"HA! YOU THINK I'M HERE TO BRING BACK WEIRDMAGEDDON? HOW CUTE," Bill said, twisting Stan's face into a crazed grin. "WE'RE PAST THAT POINT. I'M HERE FOR REVE-" His head jerked forward suddenly, which caused him to cut himself off. A small plastic cup now lay right behind his puppet's feet.

Everyone turned their heads to see a (technically) teenage girl in a light turquoise knitted sweater and an elderly man wearing a red coat and cracked glasses. Mabel and Ford. Shermie did a double take, looking back and forth between the two twins, between his brothers; one of them was supposed to be dead! Dipper grinned once he saw them. Bill did too, but for a different reason.

"WELL, WELL, WELL, IF IT ISN'T OL' SIXER AND THE SHOOTING STAR," the demon said, but before he could continue his thought, he was met with a pan to the face. There were horrified screams. Bill began to notice that Stan's nose was bleeding due to the impact. "HEY, WHAT GIVES?"

Dipper caught onto what they were doing. "'Meat bags' like me and Stan don't handle pain very well, remember?" he said condescendingly as Ford and Mabel started to move closer. Well, Ford seemed to be doing so more strategically. Mabel was running with an abundance of her Aunt Autumn's hard rolls in her hands screaming, "AIYIYIYIYIYA!" She proceeded to throw the rolls at Bill, hitting him majority of the time.

"OH NO, YOU'VE DEFEATED ME BY THROWING POORLY BAKED WHEAT PRODUCTS!" Bill said sarcastically.

"Hey!" shouted Aunt Autumn.

Bill pushed past Mabel and walked over to Ford, who looked more than prepared to punch the dream demon right out of his brother's body. He smirked. "I'M PRETTY POWERLESS IN THIS OLD MEAT SACK, YOU KNOW. IT'LL BE MUCH MORE FUN TO GET REVENGE ON _EVERYONE_ FROM THE ZODIAC, ANYWAYS. YOU'LL GET TO SEE EACH OTHER SUFFER! OH, HEY - MIGHT WANT TO KEEP WATCH ON YOUR BROTHER, STANFORD. HIS MEMORY'S NOT WHAT IT USED TO BE! SEE YOU IN THE SUMMER~!" he taunted. That seemed to be his parting message, as right after he said that, Stanley's body fell limp onto the ground. A small echo of his laugh could be heard before it eventually died out, leaving an eerie silence in the park. Well, for a fraction of a second, anyways. Murmuring arose quickly.

"Haha! We did it!" Mabel exclaimed, running over to Ford. "Up top!" She extended her hand in his direction. He smiled and gave her a high-six.

Dipper stared at the two, confused. "Mabel, how did you find Grunkle Ford? How did you know Bill was possessing Stan?" he asked, walking over to the them and peering down at his unconscious great uncle.

"Well, after he seemed to be getting along well with everyone, I went over to the playground. Zara left her doll over there, so I was going to give it back to her when it started talking. It was Grunkle Stan! He was talking through the doll. You know, like you did with your sock puppet when Bill used you as a human sock puppet. So we devised a plan, he told me where Grunkle Ford was, then boom! The plan worked!" Mabel explained, throwing her hands in the air once she was finished.

"Well you better you ready to tell us what exactly this 'plan' was, young lady." The three turned to see Abigail Pines staring straight at them with her arms crossed. Behind her was Sherman and Phil, both of whom had similar expressions of their faces. "Because you all have a lot of explaining to do."

Ford sighed, looking down at his brother who seemed to finally be stirring awake. He glanced at Dipper and Mabel, who both shared a look that practically said "yikes." Where they ready to know? Would they even understand or believe them? "It's a long story."


	2. Chapter 2

**Hey guys! After over half a year of not working on this, I decided to turn this one-shot into a two-shot! I managed to write this all in just two days!  
Originally, this was going to be in third person limited POV focused on Shermie, but it eventually went back to good ol' third person omniscent POV.  
I hope you all enjoy!**

 **~Emily Believes xoxo**

* * *

The Pines Family really couldn't be called "normal" by any stretch of the word, and what had just happened to Sherman's brother (who, mind you, had been pronounced _dead_ ) was certainly not normal. Sherman was fully prepared to throw holy water when he saw Stanley with those haunting yellow eyes chasing around his grandson. Of course, Stanley was infamous for being a prankster and even a conman in his earlier years. But even if it was him, why would he act out in such a way and say such strange things that seemed to almost be some sort of cipher?

His brother Stanford and his grandchildren Dipper and Mabel helped Stan to his feet once he stirred. The three talked to the disorientated man in hushed voices as their family members began to gather around them. They were all curious about what happened, what the long story behind this all was.

The two sets of twins finally turned to face their relatives. Sherman simply studied them at first. He still thought he had to be dreaming, maybe even hallucinating or seeing double. Stanford and Stanley. Both of his younger brothers were there, right in front of him, alive. They didn't appear to hate each other, either. "So, Ford… Stan… Do you intend on explaining all this?" Sherman said, his voice somewhat catching in his throat. He refused to believe that both of them were there in front of them. He was waiting for someone, anyone to tell him that there was only one, that the other was simply a figment of his mind.

Stubbornness. A trait definitely earned from his father.

"Of course," Ford said, wafting his hand as if to dismiss the notion that they wouldn't. He looked at his older brother in the eyes, a simple communication gesture that almost made Sherman shutter. He could tell by merely his gaze that the story the Pines Family was about to hear was not exactly the happiest. "I suppose we should start in April 1971."

Stan rolled his eyes upon hearing this date, slouching back even more than he already was. Sherman grew solemn; he remembered what happened back then. "It was me and my twin brother Stanley's senior year at high school. There was a science fair, and of course I entered with my perpetual motion machine. Representatives from West Coast Tech, an ivy league school on the other side of the country from New Jersey, heard of my experiment and wanted to evaluate it to see if I was accepted into their university or not. It was the first time I'd ever heard my father say he was impressed. However, Stanley" - he gestured to his twin, who somehow looked apologetic and sour at the same time - " _inadvertently_ broke my experiment. Because of this, I was not let into West Coast Tech, and Stanley was thrown out of the house and completely sheltered from our family."

Ah, yes. He remembered that day. Of course, at that point Sherman himself was out on his own with his own family, but he still remembered a daunting phone call from his father. " _Sherman Pines, I want you to listen and listen good. If your brother Stanley calls, don't answer. He's not welcome in our house or our family until he gains a lick of sense and some serious money."_ Was that really the reason he wasn't allowed to talk to his brother for all those years? "Stanley was thrown out 'cause he broke a science project of yours?" Sherman found the words escaped his mouth before he could stop them.

"It lost me a chance to go to one of the highest ranked universities in the country," Ford replied.

"Cost the family millions," Stan grouchily interjected. "That was the reason I was kicked out, because Ford's brains could've made the family rich. Pa said I wasn't allowed to return till _I_ made millions." His resentment and bitterness was obvious, though his older brother couldn't exactly blame him. His own complex feelings towards their father began to arise as well.

Stan continued the relatively simplified backstory, straightening himself slightly. "So, I spent the next ten years trying to find the money to get Pa's approval back. I started my own business, Stan Co. Enterprises, in which I sold cheap items to anyone who was willing to buy. Unfortunately, this caused me to get banned from… some states," Stan stated, quickly glancing over at Phil and Abigail.

"And how did you do that, exactly?" Phil asked skeptically, giving Stan a stern look, his wife mirroring such a gaze.

"Customer dissatisfaction," Stan said simply.

"His _company_ got banned from _some_ states. The people just didn't take too kindly to him," Ford corrected, causing Stan to roll his eyes. Something told Sherman that Stanley managed to get banned in more than _some_ states. "Meanwhile, I was at a university that… certainly wasn't my first choice. I had to work twice as hard to get the opportunities as I would've had I gone to West Coast Tech. A few years ahead of schedule, I completed my professional degree and thanks to a popular thesis I wrote, was awarded a research grant… But what to study? I took many fields into consideration, but I eventually chose to study anomalies." Ford held up one of his six-fingered hands. "Things that were unusual, odd, statistically impossible…

"I thought it would be the perfect field of research, but it was because of this field I met the demon that possessed Stan… Bill Cipher. Unfortunately, I didn't see his true ways at first… I was blinded by his flattery and tricks. I believed him to be a friend and a research partner, letting him voluntarily come in and out of my mind. He told me I could complete my research by building a gateway into other worlds, and with help from a mechanical genius and an old friend from university, I had. But it was when my partner had caught a glimpse of the other side of the gateway that I knew Bill wasn't what he said to be. He wanted to build that gateway, the portal to bring absolute chaos dimension, which would cause a devastating sort of… Oddpocalypse."

"Did he do it?!" asked Maxwell, a young cousin of Dipper and Mabel's, thinking the entire story being told was fictional. Frankly, many of the adults did too, but they couldn't deny that what had just happened with Stanley seemed very real. After all, Dipper seemed terrified of someone he was excited to see only moments before, and Stan's eyes were truly not human-like at all. It just left them to listen and wonder… could the story actually be true?

"Gotta wait and find out, little dude!" Mabel said energetically from beside her Grunkle Stan. She then returned her attention back to her Grunkle Ford, who continued telling a story that glossed over so many details she and Dipper already knew.

"I shut down the portal, but I didn't destroy it. I grew very paranoid, for even with the portal shut off, Bill still appeared in my dreams, taunting me. I couldn't get him out of my head. I had to hide the journals I kept my research in, so no one could fulfill Bill's plan… The first two I hid myself, but I needed the last one to go far, far away…"

Stan stood up, putting his arm in front of his twin to show that he was taking over the narrative. Ford showed to be slightly annoyed by being cut off, but conceded the storytelling anyways. After all, he didn't have much story left from this dimension. "So, I get a postcard from Gravity Falls, Oregon from my brother, sayin' I need'ta get there as fast as possible. So I go, seeing my twin for the first time in ten years, and he tells me to take his journal and sail as far away from him as possible. We're both too wrapped up in our own heads and get in an argument, then a fistfight… I accidentally activated the portal, and got Ford stuck in there. I tried to find a way to fix it on the spot, but the entire thing seemed way too complicated. I knew it was going to take a while, and I swore I wouldn't leave Ford's house until I got him back…

"But then I ran out of food. I had to go out and buy some with what little money I had… And everyone believed an a lady who said I was my brother. So I took him to his house, and tried to make something interesting out of his weird knickknacks he had lying around. The people loved it, and were willing to pay for it! So I turned that somewhat run down house into a somwhat run down tourist trap called the Mystery Shack. In order to not cause suspicion, I faked my own breath, took my brother's identity, and expanded the Mystery Shack with as many dumb things people would pay to see. I was Mr. Mystery by day, but by night… I was finding ways to fix that portal. To get my brother back."

Abigail's eyes widened in realization almost immediately after he finished his statement. "You're meaning to tell me that we sent our kids to spend the summer with some con man criminal instead of someone actually respectable?!" she questioned angrily, almost glaring at Stan. Usually, glares had no effect on Stan whatsoever, but knowing this woman could easily cut Dipper and Mabel out of his life, he grew scared.

"Well, Grunkle Ford was there for about the last few weeks of summer," Mabel said hopefully, but she knew that statement wouldn't really help anything. "Grunkle Stan got him out of the portal!"

"B-Besides! I think Grunkle Stan was the least gross and smelly monster we met during the summer," Dipper added nervously. Neither of them were really too keen on getting on their mother's bad side when she was angry.

"Monsters?" Phil said, his annoyance gradually growing into anger as well. He didn't care about the impracticality of it all; he just turned to Stan with a sharp look. "What kind of danger did you get our kids into?"

Everyone stared at the scene. Not all of them, of course, were as directly and deeply connected to those in the center of the conflict, so everything seemed like an overreaction based on a folktale. But still they watched, trying to make sense of what was going on.

Stan opened his mouth to try and explain himself, but Mabel quickly interrupted him. "He tried to protect us from it!" she exclaimed, jumping off the picnic table bench and going up to her parents. "Grunkle Stan may be a little rough around the edges, but he cares about us."

"Yeah, all summer he made sure we were safe, even with all the weirdness of Gravity Falls!" Dipper continued. He held a pleading look in his eyes almost identical to his sister's. Sure, a little bit of that might have been white lies, but it was enough to stop their parents from yelling at Stan.

Silence fell upon the park. Phil took a deep breath, looking at his twins. It was obvious they cared about this man, so he couldn't be that bad… right? Abigail wanted to believe her kids straight away, but concerns of all kinds plagued her mind. Faked his death, stole his brother's identity, got banned in multiple states, owned a sham tourist trap… It was hard to trust this man.

"Hey, what about that Bill guy? He had to have come back in order to possess Great Uncle Stan," asked Hannah, a cousin of Dipper and Mabel's in her teens.

Stanford, Stanley, Dipper and Mabel all gave each other worried glances. They couldn't talk about it without talking about Weirdmageddon, and explaining to angry parents that you put their kids through the apocalypse wouldn't exactly be the best decision. But they'd already gone too far…

"Bill was a dream demon. He appeared and haunted you whenever you fell asleep," Dipper started, everyone's attention turning on him. The three who truly knew Bill simply stared at him, confused. _What was he doing?_ "But you can see him outside your dreams if you summon him. That's exactly what someone from Gravity Falls did to get the Mystery Shack from Stan. He summoned Bill to go into Stan's mind to find the combination to a lock where he kept the deed to the property. We managed to get Bill out of Stan's head, and he hasn't really liked us since. He hasn't really liked the Pines family since Ford shut off the portal… But, one day, Bill made a deal that allowed him to gain physical form, and he captured Ford, and to save him, Stan willingly let Bill into his mind so we could erase his memory and Bill's existence along with it. Thankfully, Stan's memory came back, but unfortunately so did Bill. I guess he's just been laying low in Stan's mind since then until he could get revenge on me and Mabel."

Maybe most of that was lying by omission, but it was still the truth to some extent. It fit right into the rest of the story, and they didn't even have to bring up the terrors of Weirdmageddon-

"Does that mean he caused the Oddpocalypse?!" Zara asked excitedly, holding her doll that Mabel returned. Dipper's breath hitched slightly. _Shoot._

"Course not! Grunkle Ford made sure he couldn't!" Mabel interjected, sounding confident in her answer. Also not exactly a lie.

Everyone else seemed to buy it, either by thinking the explanation was true or just a cool story to accompany a prank, or some mix of both. Everyone seemed to return to their own devices after moments of nodding and mumbling and shrugging. Dipper and Mabel even left, pulling their parents away to convince them to return to Gravity Falls next summer. But that was when Sherman decided he'd had enough of this. He laughed, looking at the older of his twin brothers as everyone spread out around the park once more. "You're really letting old age get ta ya, aren'tcha, Ford?" he asked, his joking tone not matching his dread-stricken face.

Ford turned to his older brother, raising an eyebrow. "What do you mean?" he asked, holding his arms behind his back. He could finally get a good look at his older brother instead of just a glance. He'd aged so much… He wasn't in his twenties anymore; Ford guessed he was likely in his mid-sixties. He really hadn't been in this dimension in a long while…

Sherman's face dropped further. He looked over at Stan wistfully before facing Ford with pain in his eyes. "Stan's dead, don't ya realize?" his voice was hardly above a whisper. Only Ford could make out what he was saying. "He died _thirty years_ ago, Ford. I dunno if no one wanted ta tell ya, but he's not actually there. Phil and Abi, Dipper and Mabel, they were just playing along." Unshed tears began to burn his eyes. "I know it has to be a thing for us old men, because I can see 'im too. I know he isn't there, course, 'cause he's _dead_."

Ford gave Sherman a sympathetic look. He truly thought his brother was gone, didn't he? "You're really that stubborn?" Ford asked his brother, causing the former to earn a confused look. "I suppose all of us are, but trust me when I say this, Sherman: my mind is probably the healthiest it's ever been, and I still see Stan. Ask Dipper and Mabel yourself. He's here. His death was just faked." Stan looked over at them and raised an eyebrow.

"That story was a bunch of hogwash!" Sherman whisper-yelled, swiping his arm dramatically. "There's no way it could've happened. There's no way Stanley's alive. He can't be…" He looked over at Stan, who's confusion had turned into subtle concern. Sherman's tone grew slightly more gentle."There's no way…"

Ford stayed silent. He thought for a moment, trying to think of something to convince his stubborn brother that his _other_ stubborn brother was alive. "Sherman, listen to me. You and I can't possibly have the same hallucination of Stanley. There's neither a science nor an anomaly that could contribute to that. No one in this family would let there be an eerily long moment of silence as a hallucination talked on inside your mind. Besides, even if you did happen to have a hallucination of Stanley, then it would be of when you last saw him when he was seventeen, not a depiction of him now in his late fifties," he said.

Sherman let the words resonate with him. Actual science. Actual facts about the situation… His chest tightened, all thoughts except for his newfound realization ceasing, just for a moment. He turned to the younger of his twin brothers, tears threatening to fall from his eyes. His voice seemed to be lost in his throat, because all that came out was a croaky, "...Stanley?"

Stan smiled, genuinely smiled. "Alive," was the only word he replied with.

Sherman couldn't hold it in. Tears fell from the old man's eyes as he tackled his kin in a strong, tight hug that he had been waiting for. "Forty years," he said softly, his mind going through everything he had experienced without them. "Forty years, I've been without my brothers… It's been so long… Oh, ya _knuckleheads_."

They didn't have to know about Weirdmageddon. They didn't have to know about the true mysteries of Gravity Falls. They didn't have to know that Bill was still lurking in the mindscape, waiting to make just the right deal. They didn't have to know about what they'd experienced over the summer. It was better that way.

They'd be safe, and they could finally enjoy their family reunion.


End file.
